RongluWade-Giles romanization Jung-lu,Pinyin Ronglu ( born April 6, 1836 , China—died April 11, 1903 , Peking Beijing ) official and general during the last years of the Ch’ing Qing dynasty who organized and led one of the first brigades of Chinese troops that used Western firearms and drill. He achieved high office as a favourite of the powerful empress dowager Tz’u-hsiCixi, and he ensured that the army remained loyal to her.

In 1898 a reformist group under the Kuang-hsü Guangxu emperor attempted to modernize the Chinese military, administrative, and educational systems. To counteract the tremendous power of the empress dowager and her conservative officials, the emperor secretly replaced Jung-lu Ronglu as head of the army with Yüan Shih-k’aiYuan Shikai, one of Jung-lu’s Ronglu’s protégés and later the first president of the Chinese Republic. Yüan Yuan was to have mobilized his troops near the capital, eliminated Jung-luRonglu, and then imprisoned the empress dowager. But lacking confidence, Yüan Yuan confided the plot to Jung-luRonglu, who marched his forces into the capital, threw out the reformers, and imprisoned the emperor in his palace. Jung-lu Ronglu then became one of the most powerful ministers of the dynasty.

In the following year (1899) the empress dowager, under the domination of supporters of the antiforeign Boxer secret societies, ordered all foreigners in China killed. Although Jung-lu Ronglu did nothing to prevent the spread of the Boxers, he did not press the Boxers’ attack on the besieged foreign diplomats in their legations in PekingBeijing (Boxer Rebellion). Nevertheless, he fled for his life with Cixi to Xi’an when foreign troops entered Peking Beijing on Aug. 14, 1900. When the court returned in 1902, Jung-lu Ronglu once again resumed high office.